Darkly handsome Stefan Dvorak, Baron Ostrov, is the son of a gypsy and a venerable but disgraced Bohemian nobleman. Though educated at Oxford and welcomed by King James s court, Stefan is a wanderer by nature and not inclined to take love seriously. But he has never met anyone like the innocent and dazzling Lady Katherine de Vere, who is mourning the death of the man she hoped to marry: Henry, Prince of Wales. Despite their powerful attraction, neither Stefan nor Kat is free. The king decrees that Kat must marry a preening prig named Sir Thomas Overbury. She escapes the odious union, only to face a worse fate. After Sir Thomas falls afoul of the king s toadies and dies of poison in the Tower of London, his enemies cast the blame on Kat. Threatened with prison, she flees first to Heidelberg and then to Prague. Stefan s allegiance to his homeland of Bohemia, torn between Catholic and Protestant factions on the brink of war, trumps any notions of domestic bliss. Though he loves his little Kat, what can a penniless Gypsy baron offer a genteel aristocrat? And Kat has her own troubles. Not only does a cloud still hang over her name, but the king has threatened to confiscate her ancestral home."